Search Results: federal government (898)

Dozens of state-legal marijuana business owners and representatives from all over the country converged on Washington D.C. yesterday to pitch The Small Business Tax Equity Act to members of the U.S. House and Senate.

The bill – a brief, single page addendum to current tax laws – fixes current tax laws in the United States to allow for medical marijuana businesses to take the same deductions as other legal businesses are allowed to take on their federal returns. Currently, they are stuck paying the entire bill, which some say nearly doubles what they should really owe the government.

NPS
Sheep Lakes at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colo.

Marijuana possession (of limited amounts) might be legal in Washington and Colorado, but considering the federal government owns massive chunks of land in both states you aren’t always legally carrying ganja depending on where you are – namely national land.
According to a study conducted by the Associated Press, more than 27,700 people have been cited for marijuana possession on federal lands in the last four years. While the number is sizable in terms of drug arrests, officials say it is a paltry figure compared to the hundreds of millions of visitors to national parks, forests and monuments.

A conservative anti-tax lobbyist has become an unlikely supporter of marijuana reform at the federal level. On Thursday, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, told reporters that despite never trying cannabis (“absolutely not”), he is against the federal over-taxation of medical and recreation marijuana.
“There’s always a slight giggle factor on the issue dealing with marijuana,” Norquist tells Time magazine. “That said, this is tax policy, this is real stuff. This is important. This is everything from jobs to whether the federal government comes in and writes rules that upsets the apple cart in many, many different states.”

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy yesterday announced that the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to hold a hearing to discuss the conflicts between state and federal marijuana laws next month.
Both medical and recreational marijuana laws will be on the table for discussion, notably whether or not state employees implementing the programs will be safe from prosecution however Leahy also feels that the state’s rights to enact recreational laws should be respected.

Medical marijuana activist Eric Stevens.

Reefer common sense is taking over Miami Beach. When voters go to the polls in November to elect a new mayor, they will also get the chance to answer a non-binding straw ballot question on whether the city commission should adopt a resolution urging the federal government and the Florida Legislature to decriminalize and approve the medicinal use of marijuana in the Sunshine State.
The Miami Beach City Commission quietly approved the straw ballot language in July as a compromise with a pro-pot organization that had collected more than 8,000 signatures from voters in support of a measure to remove criminal penalties for anyone caught with small amounts of weed. Miami New Times has more.

Facing no less than 15 years, and the very real possibility of a life sentence, 56-year-old John Melvin Walker was sentenced yesterday to 22 years in federal prison stemming from a guilty verdict on charges of tax evasion and drug trafficking.
On April 1st of this year, Walker plead guilty to one count of conspiring to distribute marijuana and maintain a “drug-involved premises”, along with a 2nd count of tax evasion. Walker, who had two prior felony drug-related convictions in the State courts, was the owner of nine lucrative medical marijuana dispensaries strewn across Los Angeles and Orange Counties – a largely cash-and-carry business network that Walker admits bagged him over $25 million in his six years in operation.

Colorado democrat congressman Ed Perlmutter today introduced a bill that would allow banks to carry the accounts of medical marijuana and state-legal recreational marijuana businesses.
Because marijuana is illegal in all forms at the federal level, banks insured by the federal government have been reluctant to do business with marijuana dispensaries, even though the pot shops are legal at the state level. That has left hundreds of legal marijuana-related businesses across the country operating on a cash-only basis or hiding the true nature of their business from bankers.

Update 6/21/2013: Well, it seems the small success that hemp advocates saw yesterday was short lived. The House rejected the farm bill with the hemp amendment that would have allowed for universities to grow and study the plant.
Not only that, but it seems it was purely symbolic, considering Colorado Rep. Jared Polis – who sponsored the amendment – ended up voting against the farm bill as a whole. Don’t you just love the American government system sometimes?

Berkeley Patients Group, the largest medical marijuana dispensary in Berkeley, California, was sued by the federal government on Friday in an attempt to shut down the cornerstone collective and seize the property, according to a press release delivered today by Americans for Safe Access.
The feds accuse Berkeley Patients Group of breaking federal law by selling herb. And in a move that has been used with undeniable effect up and down the state of California, they’ve targeted BPG’s landlord and threatened her with asset and property seizure if she does not immediately evict her tenants.

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